Papers to: Drummond Fraser, Transport Canada and Peter Oppenheimer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Earlier this year, PAME - one of the six
Working Groups that comprise the Arctic Council - released its biennial
Work Plan for 2013-2015. Firmly rooted in PAME's mandate of the protection and sustainable use of the Arctic marine environment,
and complementing priorities identified by the current Canadian Arctic
Council Chairmanship,
the work plan identifies within it a suite of initiatives to be pursued
over this two-year timeframe. More specifically, PAME has been charged
with coordinating an 'Arctic sustainable tourism initiative', the
components of which are expected to include (but not be limited to):
- Collecting and assessing existing information regarding trends in Arctic tourism;
- Collecting and assessing existing information on both the adverse and beneficial environmental, social, and cultural impacts of Arctic tourism;
- Inventorying existing laws, codes, policies, guidelines and best practices pertaining to sustainable Arctic tourism;
- Based on an evaluation of the inventory, identifying fundamental principles of sustainable Arctic tourism;
- Publicizing these principles and encouraging their adoption and/or implementation by key Arctic actors;
- If/as appropriate, developing or encouraging the development of more specific codes or best practices of sustainable Arctic tourism, tailored to specific regions, communities, destinations, ecosystems, or industries.
To stay within its working mandate, PAME will focus
its particular efforts on the three above identified topics only as they
relate to Arctic shipborne tourism.